Calamity

A fairly plausible guess.

Ever since encountering the Outer God’s thoughts, the level entry had consistently displayed broken text, and when he acquired the Karma Control skill, a message appeared warning of a critical error being detected.

There was certainly a possibility that something had gone wrong with the system.

However, something bothered him about simply concluding it was a mere bug.

“There’s no consistency.”

If every system had problems, he could have accepted that.

But only some systems were affected.

The inventory wasn’t working properly, yet the status window functioned perfectly.

And with skills, it wasn’t that all of them were either usable or unusable – only certain skills couldn’t be used.

Letting out a small sigh, Yuseong focused his consciousness and tried casting several skills.

‘As expected, Pain Nullification, Asura Perception Way, and subspace can’t be used. Including the inventory, it seems only mental and spatial abilities are affected… While I could understand subspace and inventory being unusable due to this world’s spatial instability, the other two are different.’

Asura Perception Way and Pain Nullification were skills activated purely through mental power without any special conditions.

Moreover, they consumed such a minuscule amount of mental power that even his past self, who had just become a user, could use them without any issues.

Yet despite being wide awake and clear-headed, he couldn’t use Asura Perception Way and Pain Nullification.

‘It’s not that they’re failing – there’s no response at all. What could be the reason?’

There was too little information to make any guesses.

Only one thing was certain right now.

Mental and spatial skills were completely unusable.

Just as he was about to test if other skills had problems too, a scene flashed through Yuseong’s mind.

‘Come to think of it, I saw something strange when activating Eye of Truth.’

Opening his closed eyes, Yuseong took a moment to steady his breathing before activating Eye of Truth.

“Urgh!”

It was the same as before.

Instead of energy, he saw strange things like letters, numbers, symbols, and geometric shapes.

Though intense dizziness and nausea surged up, Yuseong gritted his teeth and endured.

At first, strange things merely floated in parts of his vision, but as he increased Eye of Truth’s output, the walls and objects themselves began transforming into letters and numbers.

‘Wait, this feels familiar somehow.’

Though it was his first time seeing this, it felt strangely familiar.

He definitely had seen a similar scene in a classic sci-fi movie long ago.

Creak.

At the sound of a rusty door opening, Yuseong stopped thinking and turned his head.

There stood a woman with a familiar face wearing a surprised expression.

“Ah, uncle is awake!”

“W-wait…”

“What? Ganghyeon is awake?”

“Kim Ganghyeon, you bastard! I knew you’d make it!”

Yuseong, who had been about to calm the woman down, frowned at the people entering.

They were clearly people who were either close to Kim Ganghyeon or knew him well.

In this situation, clumsily trying to act as Kim Ganghyeon would definitely raise suspicion.

‘Just as Kim Ganghyeon didn’t trust me because of mental attacks, others might think I’ve been affected by some kind of mental attack if I’m not careful.’

Normally, he wouldn’t have worried much about such issues.

Even if things got complicated, worst case he could deliberately fail the quest and start over from the beginning.

However, now failure meant the end – there was no chance to retry.

He couldn’t take even minor issues lightly.

In that split second, Yuseong made the best judgment for the current situation.

Thud.

“Uncle?!”

“G-Ganghyeon!”

Yuseong closed his eyes and let his body go limp.

It seemed he would need to stay unconscious for a few more days.

* * *

After learning Kim Ganghyeon’s personality, speech patterns, current situation, and information about the people around him from Kim Ganghyeon himself, Yuseong began conversing with the people around while pretending to briefly regain consciousness.

He kept questions simple, answers as short as possible, limited conversations to no more than 5 minutes, and closed his eyes claiming drowsiness whenever unfamiliar topics came up.

Thanks to the excuse of serious injuries, no one suspected anything, allowing Yuseong to naturally act as Kim Ganghyeon while gathering information about this world.

[A girl’s love burns like a blazing flame! For everyone’s love and happiness! The burning love magical girl Dorothy! Making her appearance right here!]

A girl who appeared in a city of millions while shouting childish lines that seemed to belong in a children’s cartoon.

Though she emerged by cutting through space like monsters, people stared blankly at the girl instead of screaming or running away.

Unlike the monsters that had appeared until now, the girl looked too harmless.

A magic wand with hearts on it, a pink dress covered in frills.

Pretty flower hair ornaments and shoes with tiny wings.

If not for the scene of space being torn, anyone would have thought she was just a cute girl in magical girl cosplay.

[Sh-shouldn’t we run away?]

[No, wait. Maybe she’s an esper or mage?]

[Idiot! What ability user appears like that? That’s a monster!]

The magical girl, who had been striking cute poses for people taking photos, stiffened at that moment.

[Calling an adorable magical girl a monster! You’re bad people! Presents for good people! Punishment for bad people! Prepare yourselves!]

Heart-shaped lights began sparkling around the magical girl.

Even at this point, people weren’t taking the situation seriously.

Not only did this cute-looking girl not seem like a monster at all, but even if she was one, they thought she wouldn’t cause much damage before being dealt with by ability users.

However, the moment a tiny fireball appeared at the tip of her magic wand, people realized something was wrong.

Sizzle!

[Kyaaaah!]

[H-help… Arrrghhh!]

The ground, roads, cars, buildings, and people.

Everything around the girl was melting and burning.

In the middle of that hellish scene.

Magical girl Dorothy aimed her wand straight ahead with a bright smile and shouted.

[Fire!]

A heat ray that seemed about 10 meters in diameter pierces through the city.

The magical girl maintained the heat ray’s output while starting to spin in place.

Though the rotation lasted barely 10 seconds, it resulted in the city being completely devastated.

But the magical girl, as if this wasn’t enough, began going wild in earnest.

Flying into the sky to rain down thousands of bombardments, charging with her bare body to collapse buildings, using all sorts of outlandish magic to torment people and make them suffer before killing them.

After literally obliterating the city over a week day and night, the magical girl muttered incomprehensible words like “Que sera sera” and “Kastropolis” before vanishing beyond the sky.

-What do you think? Now you understand why she’s called the Magical Girl of Death? Not a single person has survived encountering her.

“……”

Yuseong could only nod silently.

When he had just heard about it, he hadn’t really understood, but after watching the video directly, he could viscerally feel why she was called the Magical Girl of Death.

As soon as the magical girl’s video ended, footage showing the next calamity began playing.

-Mad Magician.

When the magician wearing a black hat and white mask waved his staff, the people around disappeared like a lie.

Soon after, the vanished people began falling from the sky at terrifying speeds.

Splat! Splat! Splat!

[M-monster!]

[Die! Die! Dieeee!]

Ability users and soldiers some distance away began unleashing attacks at Mad Magician all at once.

Mad Magician exaggeratedly shrugged his shoulders and began making gestures like searching for something inside his silk hat.

What Mad Magician pulled out from his hat were cute rabbits.

And those rabbits began indiscriminately attacking people.

Mad Magician, who had been waving a flag and cheering, threw a grenade to kill all the rabbits and people before pulling out a box from somewhere, climbing inside, and vanishing.

-Leviathan.

A mountain moves.

No, that wasn’t a mountain but a massive creature.

Leviathan, spanning dozens of kilometers, moved as slowly as its size suggested.

Even with the video playing at 10x speed, it took nearly 10 minutes to take one step.

However, the aftermath was overwhelming.

Rumble!

With an apocalyptic roar, the ground rose and split, and lava erupted from the cracks.

A monster that destroyed everything slowly but surely.

Occasionally mushroom clouds presumed to be nuclear explosions rose, but Leviathan continued moving at a constant speed without slowing down at all.

-Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Four knights each wearing black, white, red, and pale armor.

When the White Knight drew his bow, people collapsed while coughing blood.

When the Red Knight swung his sword, people began fighting each other like madmen.

When the Black Knight raised his scales, fertile land instantly withered.

Finally, when the Blue Knight brought down his scythe, everyone in frame suddenly died.

The shortest but most chilling video.

‘They’re all transcendents or beings of that level.’

Yuseong let out a sigh.

He had checked to understand what kind of beings the calamities were and if there were any weaker ones, but none seemed manageable at all.

“Brain Eater is actually the easiest opponent.”

“Uncle, what did you just say?”

“Oh, just thinking out loud.”

Yuseong swallowed dryly at the woman looking at him with bewildered eyes.

Soyeon.

She was Kim Ganghyeon’s relative who had been caught in Brain Eater’s telekinetic shield.

Though he had spoken without much thought, it wasn’t a very pleasant thing to hear for people of this world that had been driven to the brink of extinction by calamities.

Fortunately, Soyeon smiled and said.

“Well, I suppose you’ve earned the right to say that.”

Until now, excluding nuclear weapons, very few individuals had managed to harm calamities through their own power.

Yet Yuseong had gone beyond merely causing damage and achieved the feat of making Brain Eater flee.

Not just the people here, but everyone across the country and world who had heard the news was rejoicing that hope had finally appeared.

This much confidence was acceptable.

As Soyeon casually moved on, Yuseong let out a relieved sigh and put down the tablet.

One week since regaining consciousness.

During that time, he had somewhat grasped this world and the system errors.

‘Time to start moving.’

Though it was supposedly for recovering from injuries, wasting two weeks of time was extremely painful.

Without knowing the time ratio, he couldn’t afford to waste any more time.

Yuseong half-opened his eyes and sank into thought.

Currently, he had two options.

Though he was fairly confident which option was correct, he had to be careful since retries were impossible.

After pondering for a long while, Yuseong reached a conclusion.

“Call everyone.”

“Huh? Why?”

“We need to hunt down the escaped calamity.”